Parallels BUSINESS AUTOMATION Getting Started Guide
Parallels
Parallels Business
Automation - Standard
Getting Started Guide
Release 4.0
(c) 1999-2010
Printed: 12/23/2010
Contents
Preface 6
Typographical Conventions......................................................................................................................... 6
Feedback...................................................................................................................................................... 7
About This Guide......................................................................................................................................... 7
Audience...................................................................................................................................................... 7
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 8
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Advantages................................................................................8
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Deployment Scenario.............................................................. 11
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Interface Features.................................................................... 11
Navigation.................................................................................................................................................. 11
Main Screen ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Adding a Comment to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Object............................................13
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Tools.......................................................................................13
Browsers Compatible with Parallels Business Automation - Standard...................................................... 15
Starting HSP Business with Parallels Business Automation - Standard 16
Connecting to Parallels Business Automation - Standard Browser-Based Tools ......................................17
Initial Settings............................................................................................................................................ 19
Getting Acquainted with Provider Control Center..................................................................................... 22
Looking into Reseller Control Center........................................................................................................25
Inspecting Customer Control Panel............................................................................................................26
Registering Users and Setting Access Permissions.................................................................................... 28
Configuring Data Center and Connecting Hardware.................................................................................31
Setting Up Domains Registration ................................................................................................... 33
Allocating IP Addresses.................................................................................................................. 35
Establishing Connection with Hardware......................................................................................... 36
Getting Ready to Sell Hosting Services..................................................................................................... 37
Basic Notions Used in Parallels Business Automation - Standard Billing......................................38
Setting Up Billing........................................................................................................................... 40
Creating Hosting Plans ................................................................................................................... 41
Securing Parallels Business Automation - Standard Tools Using SSL........................................... 42
Configuring Payment Pug-Ins......................................................................................................... 43
Configuring Online Store................................................................................................................ 44
Going Live................................................................................................................................................. 46
What's Next? 48
Managing Receivables...............................................................................................................................48
Supervising the Cash Flow......................................................................................................................... 49
Monitoring the Data Center Resources Usage...........................................................................................51
Checking the Licenses Usage..................................................................................................................... 52
Daily Activities.......................................................................................................................................... 52
Getting Technical Support 56
An Overview of Parallels Technical Support............................................................................................. 56
Questions for Technical Support................................................................................................................ 56
How to Send Support Questions................................................................................................................ 57
Index 59
Printed: 12/23/2010
Copyright Notice
Parallels Holdings, Ltd.
c/o Parallels International GMbH.
Parallels International GmbH
Vordergasse 49
CH - 8200 Schaffhausen
Switzerland
Tel: + 49 (6151) 42996 - 0
Fax: + 49 (6151) 42996 - 255
Copyright © 1999-2010 by Parallels Holdings Ltd. and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This product is protected by United States and international copyright laws. The product's underlying
technology, patents, and trademarks are listed at http://www.parallels.com/trademarks
Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, Windows NT, Windows Vista, and MS-DOS are registered
trademarks of Microsoft Corporatio n.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Mac is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.
All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
6
C HAPTER 1
Preface
In This Chapter
Typographical Conventions.................................................................................................. 6
Feedback ...............................................................................................................................7
About This Guide..................................................................................................................7
Audience ...............................................................................................................................7
Typographical Conventions
Before you start using this guide, it is important to understand the documentation conventions
used in it.
The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.
Formatting convention Type of Information Example
Special Bold
Italics Used to emphasize the
Monospace
Items you must select, such
as menu options, command
buttons, or items in a list.
Titles of chapters, sections,
and subsections.
importance of a point, to
introduce a term or to
designate a command line
placeholder, which is to be
replaced with a real name or
value.
The names of commands,
files, directories, and
domain names.
Go to the System tab.
Read the Basic
Administration chapter.
The system supports the so
called wildcard character
search.
The license file is located in
the
http://docs/common/
licenses directory.
Preface 7
Preformatted
Preformatted Bold
CAPITALS Names of keys on the
KEY+KEY Key combinations for which
On-screen computer output
in your command-line
sessions; source code in
XML, C++, or other
programming languages.
What you type, contrasted
with on-screen computer
output.
keyboard.
the user must press and hold
down one key and then
press another.
# ls –al /files
total 14470
# cd /root/rpms/php
SHIFT, CTRL, ALT
CTRL+P, ALT+F4
Feedback
If you have found a mistake in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve
this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at
http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/. Please include in your report the guide's title,
chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.
About This Guide
This Guide describes the most important and frequently-used Parallels Business Automation Standard working scenarios including initial settings for the system.
Note: The PDF-version of this Guide is an overview of the Parallels Business Automation Standard overall functionality and is not to be used as a thorough howto. For details see contextsensitive HTML help (the Help link at the upper right corner of every screen).
Audience
This guide is addressed to Hosting Service Providers and helps both to evaluate the product and
get acquainted with Parallels Business Automation - Standard.
8
C HAPTER 2
Meet the Parallels Business Automation Standard
Parallels Business Automation - Standard is an end-to-end solution for hosting service providers
(HSPs) and Internet Data Centers covering full life-cycle of HSP/IDC operations. Parallels
Business Automation - Standard allows HSPs to drastically decrease the cost of operating
hosting business while increasing revenues, developing new reseller channels, and improving
usage of hardware and personnel resources.
In This Chapter
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Advantages ........................................................8
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Deployment Scenario......................................... 11
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Interface Features............................................... 11
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Tools..................................................................13
Browsers Compatible with Parallels Business Automation - Standard.................................15
Parallels Business Automation Standard Advantages
Parallels Business Automation - Standard includes everything a company needs to run a
successful and profitable hosting business from advanced technology and tools to manage your
servers and overall infrastructure to billing, sales channel management, and e-commerce
application:
The full range of services supported:
Domain registration
Plesk Domain hosting
Virtuozzo Container hosting
Parallels Plesk Control Panel
and Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder
licenses
Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder
support
Dedicated servers for resellers
Dedicated or Co-location
Miscellaneous
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 9
Complete infrastructure management:
Powerful Container
management
IPs allocation and DNS
administration
Flexible self-provisioning
Server-/client-side backups
Integrated trouble ticketing and
External Helpdesks support
Maintenance automation and
more
Integrated complete billing solution:
Customizable online store
Country-specific accounting
Automated recurring invoicing
Private label resellers
Discounts, promotions, coupon
codes
Taxation with tax exemption
Automated upgrades/downgrades
Customizable notifications and
more
Credit Cards processing through over 30 payment gateways (new added
monthly):
integrated with fraud screening
flexible manual approval rules
refunds, reversals, credits
sensitive data is encrypted
delayed capture
CVV/AVS verification and more
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 10
Bank transfer payments for German (DTAUS), Spanish (Norma 19), and Netherlands
(ClieOp3) standards: flexible batch management with approval queues.
Domain registrations through over 25 domain registrars (new added
monthly):
Wide range of Operating Systems and Applications for Container hosting:
Centralized management
Automated upgrades
Over 50 applications
Easy customization and integration:
Customizable PHP based store
Notifications customization
Customizable menu items
Colors, logos, page content
Create your own plug-ins
Redhat, Fedora, Suse, Debian
Open-source and commercial
applications
Game servers and more
Application templates creation
guide
Powerful API
Advanced multi-language
support
XML data export/import tools
Everything in one box!
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 11
Parallels Business Automation Standard Deployment Scenario
Parallels Business Automation - Standard can be successfully installed both on the physical
server or (if you use the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers technology) in Virtuozzo Container.
The computer (or virtual server) that runs Parallels Business Automation - Standard is called
Management Node in terms of Parallels Business Automation - Standard. The servers that run
software that provides hosting services (run Virtuozzo Containers, Plesk Domains, or some
other third-party software) are called Hardware Nodes or just Nodes. Parallels Business
Automation - Standard administrator can connect to the Management Node via the Internet and
guide the hosting business using the web-based interface.
Parallels Business Automation Standard Interface Features
Navigation
To use one or another Parallels Business Automation - Standard component or tool, please use
the namespace tree located in the left pane.
Control Centers specific:
You can hide/display the namespace tree by clicking on the slider at the vertical bar that
separates the left and the right parts of the screen.
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 12
When you start your Parallels Business Automation - Standard session, the path (chain of links)
appears at the top of the screen. These links provide the "breadcrumb navigation" and show you
the path to your actual location within the Parallels Business Automation - Standard. By clicking
on these links, you can be one or more (depending on your location) levels up.
Main Screen
The right pane of Parallels Business Automation - Standard screen serves for operating
components selected from the namespace tree. The main screen shows the Parallels Business
Automation - Standard Directors' or Managers' dashboards, lists of objects, single objects'
properties, or other related data.
Each Parallels Business Automation - Standard component (Director or Manager) has its own
dashboard. Moreover, the Parallels Business Automation - Standard has its dashboard that may
be considered as 30,000-foot view of tools and operations. So, a dashboard is the Parallels
Business Automation - Standard component 'front-page' that provides you with the most
important statistics and a place to start including:
Shortcuts to the lists of objects.
Information about the number of objects with separate counters for the objects in different
states like Active Accounts, Accounts on Hold, Running Containers, etc.
Shortcuts for the creation of new objects that fall into the functionality of Parallels Business
Automation - Standard component selected.
To facilitate operating the lists of objects you can use:
Search particular item within the list or filter the items by a particular property. The Search
and filter bar is located at the top of each list.
Hide/Show search and filter bars, action bars, tables and create/edit forms sections. Their
hide/show status is retained throughout the session.
Change Sorting Order. To this effect, click on the column-heading you want to sort by. In
this case, the special pointer (small triangle) appears at the top of each column. This triangle
indicates current sorting order: peak-up or peak-down for ascending and descending order
respectively. Repeating click on the same link in column-heading changes sorting order
from ascending to descending (and conversely) within single property.
Change List Size. It is possible to set the listing to 20, 40, or 80 items per page. Appropriate
links are above the list, to the right. Special links for viewing pages (page numbers,
next,last) are also provided and you can find them both at the beginning and the end of the
list.
Export lists to Excel. Parallels Business Automation - Standard allows you to export data
from any list in Parallels Business Automation - Standard to Excel, thus facilitating data
operations. The information is exported from the whole list, not only from the visible part.
For example, if you have set the listing to 40 items per page and the whole list includes 100
entries, you will get an excel format document covering 100 items. The
icon is located above and under the lists.
Set columns visibility. You can choose the columns to be displayed in the list tables by
clicking on the
entries in the drop-down menu. You are also allowed to set the columns order by drag-anddropping the column titles.
icon above and under the list and enabling/disabling the corresponding
Export to Excel
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 13
In order to immediately bring the screen content in correspondence with actual state of affairs,
you can Refresh the screen using the button located at the upper right corner of the screen.
The Help button located at the upper right corner of each screen shows the context-sensitive
HTML help.
Screen ID is located at the upper-right corner of each screen. Screen ID allows to refer to a
screen for customization purposes or in the problem report. In addition, each screen ID is a
clickable link that leads the the Screens Viewer and allows getting a screen alias immediately.
Adding a Comment to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Object
You can add a free-form comment to almost any of Parallels Business Automation - Standard
object. To this effect click on the Add comment link at the upper-right corner of an object view
form.
Parallels Business Automation Standard Tools
Parallels Business Automation - Standard modular design consists of four main subsystems each
with web-based tools to manage a part of hosting service provider business:
Provider Control Center (HSP GUI). Browser-based tool for the Hosting Service
Provider. Includes the customizable online store and front-end website. Provider Control
Center allows managing all the Parallels Business Automation - Standard tools and
supervising Resellers' online stores. In addition a Provider can log in to any Reseller Control
Center or any of Provider's customers' Control Panels.
Reseller Control Center (Reseller GUI). Browser-based tool for the reseller. Provides
access to the functionality of Parallels Business Automation - Standard components
(directors and managers) available for the reseller plus customizable online store and frontend website.
Note: Each Control Center allows hosting services provisioning with access to the Parallels
Business Automation - Standard Control Panel.
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 14
Customer Control Panel. Parallels Business Automation - Standard Control Panel is a
browser-based tool that allows a customer to manage his (or her) account and buy services
using the Control Panel Upgrade Center. Without respect to existence of subscriptions and
services purchased, the Control Panel is available by default for all persons that have
Parallels Business Automation - Standard Accounts of "customer" type.
In addition there are three task-oriented sets of tools that alow a customer to build a
website, or perform system administration tasks (manage Virtuozzo Container or Plesk
domain), or create end-users with ability for such a user to manage both a mailbox and
home directory via the special browser-based tool. These sets of tools are also called
Control Panels and sold as applications included in hosting plans:
Workgroup Administrator Control Panel (WACP). An application that includes tools
for small company administrator or workgroup administrator (or workgroup users
without the dedicated administrator). It hides from the user the complexity of server
administration and allows users without deep system administration knowledge to
perform simple tasks like mail management and website deployment.
System Administrator Control Panel (SACP). An application for the system
administrator that allows managing Container. Users should have the basic system
administration knowledge. SACP allows a customer to configure Container services and
users, configure mail, manage databases.
My Control Panel (MyCP). My Control Panel is sold as an application within a hosting
plan and provides access for Container or Plesk domain users to the browser-based enduser tool that allows managing user personal information, configuring e-mail
autoresponders, configuring mail forwarding to an external address, both uploading and
managing files in user home directory.
Note: It is possible to integrate the custom e-commerce solutions with Parallels Business
Automation - Standard using the API provided. For more details on customization, please refer
to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Integration Guide.
Meet the Parallels Business Automation - Standard 15
Browsers Compatible with Parallels Business Automation - Standard
The following browsers are fully compatible with Parallels Business Automation - Standard
web-based tools:
For IBM PC compatible computers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0 and above,
Netscape Navigator 7.0 and above,
Opera 7.5.3 and above,
Mozilla 1.5 and above,
Firefox 1.0 and above.
Google Chrome 8.
For Macintosh:
Safari 1.3 and above,
Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac 5.2,
Opera 8.5
Mozilla/Firefox 1.07.
16
C HAPTER 3
Starting HSP Business with Parallels Business Automation - Standard
Using the Parallels Business Automation - Standard tools you can compose service packages
called Hosting Plans and publish these offerings in your e-commerce store. Services are
provided automatically for accounts with credit limit not exceeded.
The Parallels Business Automation - Standard allows providing a wide range of hosting
services:
Dedicated (physical server):
Virtuozzo - physical server with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers installed and ability to
create virtual private servers and sell them to customers. Parallels Virtuozzo Containers
dedicated hosting can be provided both to Enterprise Customers and Resellers. Provider
can manage a Hardware Node on the system level plus fully automated billing is
provided.
Plesk - physical server with Plesk Server Administrator software installed.
Plesk server in Container that behaves exactly as a stand-alone physical Plesk server.
Physical server with an arbitrary software installed. In this case, a Provider can bill the
customer that have bought the server and manage the dedicated subscription, but it is not
possible to manage this server on the system level using the Provider Control Center
tools.
Container
Virtuozzo Container (with root access or without root access) that behaves just like a
standalone physical server.
Name-based Virtuozzo Container. Virtuozzo name-based hosting is a Container-related
implementation of a well-known technique of name-based web hosting, implemented,
for example, in the Apache web server. Virtuozzo name-based hosting enables the
Hardware Node administrator to provide a single external IP address for all or a number
of Containers hosted on that Node.
Shared:
Plesk Shared (Plesk Domain) with ability to create website, upload files and images,
manage mail and database.
Plesk Multi Domain:
Plesk Client account with ability to create and manage Plesk Domains.
Starting HSP Business with Parallels Business Automation - Standard 17
Domain Registration
Miscellaneous (custom and non-hosting services). Note that you can add custom services
that can be billed or not (for example, support) to any of hosting plans.
One-Time Fee Item. Special hosting plan type that allows one-time purchase without
subscription creation and without any further recurring payments.
More information about Parallels Business Automation - Standard and its many features is
available in the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Provider's Guide.
In This Chapter
Connecting to Parallels Business Automation - Standard Browser-Based Tools.................17
Initial Settings ....................................................................................................................... 19
Getting Acquainted with Provider Control Center................................................................ 22
Looking into Reseller Control Center...................................................................................25
Inspecting Customer Control Panel.......................................................................................26
Registering Users and Setting Access Permissions............................................................... 28
Configuring Data Center and Connecting Hardware............................................................31
Getting Ready to Sell Hosting Services................................................................................37
Going Live ............................................................................................................................ 46
Connecting to Parallels Business
Automation - Standard BrowserBased Tools
To connect to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard tools, enter into your browser the
Management Node hostname and append the tool index (http://hostname/index):
Tool Tool index
Public Site
Online Store
Provider Control Center pcc
Reseller Control Center rcc
Customer Control Panel cp
Starting HSP Business with Parallels Business Automation - Standard 18
The SSL protocol can be enabled from Provider Control Center, separately for each of Parallels
Business Automation - Standard web-based tools. The SSL configuration is available both in
Provider and Reseller Control Centers.
Your first Parallels Business Automation - Standard session starts from the Provider Control
Center. After you make some initial settings to Parallels Business Automation - Standard, you
can log in to any of the other tools.
After you connect to the Parallels Business Automation - Standard Provider Control Center, you
will be prompted for login and password. Enter the default login and password generated by the
Parallels Business Automation - Standard installer. The default is an e-mail like
root@your_management_node_hostname (in actual login your_management_node_hostname
must be replaced with an actual hostname of the computer that runs Parallels Business
Automation - Standard, i.e., the Management Node) and the password is generated in a random
way by the Parallels Business Automation - Standard installer.
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